The Recent Revolution in Organ Building / Being an Account of Modern Developments

by George Laing Miller

WESTMINSTER ABBEY ORGAN, LONDON, ENG.

All good Americans when they visit London go to Westminster Abbey, and will be interested in the organ there; in fact we believe it was largely built with American money. The house of William Hill & Son, who built this organ, is the oldest firm of organ-builders in England, being descended from the celebrated artist, John Snetzler, whose business, founded in 1755, passed into the possession of Thomas Elliot, and to his son-in-law, William Hill (inventor of the Tuba), in the earlier part of the Nineteenth Century. The business has been in the Hill family nearly a hundred years and is now directed by William Hill's grandson. The firm has built many notable instruments in Great Britain and her colonies (Sydney) celebrated for the refinement and purity of their tone.